IllTimed Proposals
by Aeria
Summary: Kurt/Blaine with added Cooper. Futurey fic. A Friday night out with friends ends up at Cooper's plush apartment. A cheese plate and another bottle of wine later, Kurt and Cooper get talking...


Title: Ill-timed Proposals

Rating: T

Spoilers: Character spoilers for episode 14…Cooper...if you don't know who that is…run away.

Summary: Futurey fic. A Friday night out with friends ends up at Cooper's plush apartment. A cheese plate and another bottle of wine later, Kurt and Cooper get talking…

Words: 2000

A/N: Oops.

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><p>I like to think Kurt goes to Cooper to ask for the family blessing in asking for Blaine's hand. I like to think it's due to a convoluted mess of reasons and maybe a few too many beers and maybe Blaine's slunk off to the guest room of Cooper's Upper West Side apartment. But Kurt just blurts it out:<p>

"Can I ask Blaine to marry me?"

And Cooper falls off the bar stool as he laughs and then he rights himself and starts eating the cheese and fruit and crackers laid out on the kitchen counter.

"You're asking me permission?"

Kurt looks flustered and bewildered, "I guess I am."

And Cooper keeps laughing, ignoring the obvious pang at the logic of Kurt asking him and not his father. They both know what his father would say. "Why?" Cooper splutters.

Kurt shouldn't be one for tradition.

But Kurt splutters and gulps down more red wine. "I don't know! I thought he was going to ask me. I was so sure! Like…forever ago! I didn't care whether he went and talked to my dad. God knows my dad wouldn't care. But then he didn't and it's been so long and we keep talking about kids, Coop. Kids! But not marriage, so maybe he wants me to ask?"

Cooper keeps laughing and Kurt starts to scowl.

"You want my blessing?" he eventually asks.

"Yes."

"You need it?"

Kurt hesitates. "Probably not."

Cooper crams another cracker topped with blue cheese into his mouth and debates making enough noise to rouse his brother. "Then I fully support you both. And I am very flattered that you bothered to ask."

Kurt blushes and pauses. "You think I should ask him?"

Cooper's eyes light up: "Oh really! Cold feet already!"

Kurt just rolls his eyes and slides away to pace, wine glass in hand, hair dishevelled where he's raked his fingers through it too many times. "No! I just…why hasn't he asked me already?"

Cooper shrugs and fidgets. "Why does _he_ have to ask _you_?"

Kurt pauses, standing still. Cooper has a point. In their case more than others the heterosexual norms are thrown into disarray. Blaine doesn't have to ask. But one of them does.

"So I can ask?"

"And he'll say yes."

"You're sure?"

Cooper rolls his eyes and, rather stupidly gulps down the rest of his wine.

"You know how you owe me because of those times in New York when you both were sharing dorms with random dudes taking arts classes?"

Kurt reels. Cooper was never meant to call in this favour. "No," he gasps.

"Yes. You owe me for all those time you took to my apartment and had sex in my bed and ruined the sheets—"

"We washed those!" Kurt squeals, now backed up against the sofa and with no idea what comes next.

"And the kitchen? My fridge? My counters? My couch? My bathroom sink? My beautiful bathtub?"

Kurt blushes deep red and Cooper can't _know_. But he's guessing. And it's true. Stolen weekends in Blaine's big brother's apartment rediscovering each other and keeping everything between them alive and thriving. And fucking hard and deep, drawn out and fast, loving and desperate. Against and on every surface they could find.

"My neighbours complained!" Cooper points out and that's the first Kurt's heard of it but he's not surprised: Blaine gets loud.

"That crack in my wall…" Cooper trails off.

Kurt has been so sure he wouldn't notice.

"So you owe me for those two years of sullying my living space and now I'm prepared to forgive it all." His eyes dance with mischief.

Brow furrowed, Kurt's sipping more wine and pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He asked Cooper for his brother's hand in marriage, how did they end up here? "What do you want?"

Cooper's glass hits the counter with a clink as he huffs and puffs and pushes back from the counter. "You come with me upstairs and I'll consider your debts paid."

"Why?" Kurt asks.

"Nope."

"Cooper, if you know something."

"Come with me."

Another hesitation. He's drunk, he knows. Asking Cooper what he's asked wasn't meant to happen on a Friday night, late and hazy and on a whim. But he's sick of waiting he wants all of it. The life and the ceremony and the bank accounts and the dog and the kids.

"Fine."

Cooper _races _up the stairs.

Kurt follows.

Then Cooper's in Blaine's room and throwing himself onto the bed, pushing hard into Blaine's side, bouncing as he throws arms and legs around his brother and squeezes until he thrashes and wakes up. He's groggy and groaning, "Leave me alone," and "it's been a long week," and "fuck off cooper."

But Cooper wrestles and wins and ends up straddling Blaine's waist and holding him down, wrists under his hands, Blaine still dressed in the workday's white shirts and tailored pants.

Kurt hovers in the doorway.

"Leave me alone," Blaine whines. Puppy dog eyes and pouting.

"Where is it?" Cooper asks.

Blaine blinks, confused and then not really. Looking from Cooper to Kurt and then back. "Where's what?" he asks carefully.

"He wants it. Where is it?"

Blaine thrashes and does his best to throw Cooper off but Cooper is settled, heavy and grinning and drunk.

"Do it now or he's going to go off and do it for himself!"

Kurt huffs in the doorway, swears under his breath and moves to drag Cooper back downstairs and spend the rest of the night glaring at him.

But Blaine's up, stunned into action and bending and twisting, wincing with a too-long week of sitting at his desk. He's staring hard at Kurt, stumbling, pausing.

"He wanted my permission." Cooper sing-song teases from the bed where he's been left sprawling. "To ask _you."_

Kurt starts to yelp out something, anything, to shut him up but Blaine is louder. "Shut up!" he barks.

Kurt watches him move, mouth silently closing as Cooper stills, up on his elbows and watching.

Blaine finds his suit jacket where he left it, still hanging on the open door. His fingers are deft, slipping into the right breast pocket easily, quickly and then he hesitates. Pauses. Waits.

"Blaine…" Kurt cannot believe this. Can't actually believe that what he thinks is happening is happening because surely Blaine's reaching for something else.

Then he's there on both knees and his hands are shaking. It's not a box, it's a small silk pouch, white and the ribbons are gold and Kurt doesn't know why he notices but then there's a ring and Blaine staring up at him and holding it between them.

"Marry me."

"Oh my god."

"Shit." Blaine throws a look at Cooper, bewildered and amazed and in love with this boy staring at him. "I had so many plans,"

"Why didn't you ask me?" Kurt wonders, high pitched and breathless and trying to get a good look at the shine of what looks like silver and gold.

"I didn't—"

Cooper cuts them off with an whinging, "Two years!"

"What?"

"What?"

But Cooper flops back and stares at the ceiling and listens.

"I couldn't find the right moment!" Blaine says, voice still rough from sleep, his hair curled and lop-sided and his eyes squinting up at Kurt in the doorway. "I knew I wanted it. But I wanted it to be so special and then every time I though about asking I just—"

"You've had this for two years?" Kurt hasn't sounded this high-pitched and frantic for…maybe ever.

"Yes! God, I've known this for longer but the ring had to be found and I had to talk to Burt and then I did and—"

"Shut up!"

Blaine does as he's told feeling moronically stupid on both knees and holding a tiny ring of intertwined white and rose gold up in the air.

"Shut up," Kurt tries again and, despite his best intentions, Cooper chuckles from the bed.

A deep breath, hands open at his sides and then clenched as he tries to push the wine out of his mind and the enormity…"Ask me again."

Silence stretches. Beating away with their hearts and Cooper has shut up and Blaine's breath is shuddering out of him

"Will you," Blaine swallows. He has practiced every permutation of this. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes!" Kurt's answer is out before Blaine's finished and then Kurt's flinging himself down onto his knees and at his boyfriend…his _fiancé_. Hugging him and pressing close and then drawing back, face panicked and eyes wide. "No wait." He looks around. "We're doing this is the guestroom of your brother's apartment…" he points out, breathless, bemused, still grinning though. He looks up to where Cooper is still lying on the bed, ankles crossed and his eyes bright, his lips quirked up in a grin. Voice hushed, Kurt continues, "And your brother is on the bed and…This is meant to be momentous and romantic and—"

Blaine falls against him, hands on his waist where they're knelt on the floor, forehead to forehead now. "I know. God, I'm sorry. I should have done it when…" But he nuzzles and smiles because Kurt has said 'yes'. "I was waiting for romantic and momentous."

But Kurt just laughs and mumbles, "Oh god, no, why?" and kisses him. "Why wait. Fuck." Another kiss and for once Cooper isn't wooping in the background, no commentary, no crass remarks.

"Just marry me," Kurt says.

Blaine pulls away, both hands on Kurt's cheeks and he looks hopeful. "Leave the momentous and romantic stuff for the wedding," he wonders. "Oh my god, the wedding! You'll plan it? Your family and mine all together and the party! And the honeymoon!"

Kurt's got the ring, is turning it over in his fingers and feeling the smooth cool metal, recognising the immediate resonance with his heart. Then he's sliding it on.

"Jesus, can you imagine!" Blaine keeps rambling and Kurt's laughing through tears. "We have to find a venue and a season. You want fall don't you? So we can wear suits and be comfortable? Outside? Water and red leaves? We need flower girls and best men and…" Blaine stops and he stares at Kurt and he knows. "Coop?"

They both look and Cooper is watching them and it should, technically feel like an intrusion but in a flash Kurt realizes that if Cooper hadn't dragged him upstairs they'd be dancing around the question indefinitely. Waiting for the moment, instead of having it pushed, blissfully, onto them.

Cooper's eyes sparkle and he's ready to be kicked out, happy to be pushed back down the hall towards his room where he'll have to spend the night ignoring the occasionally high-pitched laughs and moans and bangs resonating from their room.

He grins and thinks he's done well. "Yeah Blaine?"

"You'll be my best man?"

He's gobsmacked for a second. Looking to Kurt but just meeting a smile. And his heart melts. He envies them but not enough to impinge on the utter love he has for them both, as well as everything between them. Cooper shrugs and demurs and tries to act nonchalant. "When you and Kurt finally, inevitably, unavoidably get married in the wedding of the year? Oh I don't know…"

"Coop…" Blaine asks and Cooper can see his hand pulling Kurt in tight at the hip, bodies shuffling so they're side by side, their fingers finding cloth cover skin and indenting and Cooper takes his cue to roll off the bed.

"I suppose I could," he drawls. "But only if there's tiramisu at the reception."

Blaine and Kurt both laugh at him but already they're both figuring him into their speeches.

Then Cooper is edging past them and out the door, pulling it shut behind him and Kurt's muttering, "Thank you," because really…

And then it's just them. Staring and on the floor and presses close. "Two years?" Kurt asks, baffled.

Blaine blushes and looks down and sees the ring around pale strong fingers, shining and strong and his breath catches.

"I'm sorry."

But Kurt shakes his head. "This was perfect."

Blaine chuckles and pulls him to his feet, starts coaxing him towards the bed with playful touches and soft kisses to his neck. "Except for Cooper," Blaine asks.

"Especially with Cooper."


End file.
